We'd struggled a bit with how to get from Cavtat to our next destination, Herceg Novi, which was just across the border in Montenegro. We could've taken a bus, but they only left from the main Dubrovnik station, half an hour back the way we'd come from and were surprisingly expensive to boot (about NZD29 each for a ~50km trip). There were private transfers available, but they were even pricier, and taxis (even if they could cross the border) are reluctant to head further away from Dubrovnik and charge accordingly.
In the end we figured our best bet was actually to take an Uber to the border for about NZD35, walk across and figure out what to do once we arrived (I realize now that there were I frequent but extant local buses that would've taken us close to the border and been even cheaper. But our driver was a really nice guy, and we had fun talking to him about his career in the merchant marine and about wild pigs and soforth. Plus doing it this way already made me feel clever, even if there was a cleverer way of doing it).
At the Croatian border post there were sidewalks everywhere and we just walked up to the front of the queue and were ushered over to the (empty) bus lane and processed instantly.
It was a pretty 1.5km walk downhill to the Montenegrin post, where we stood in the short queue amongst traffic (in amongst a group of motorcyclists) and were duly welcomed into the country. We debated and hemmed and hawed and eventually decided that hitchhiking was the way to go. As Sarah said, when hitching it often seems like you'll never get a ride until you do, at which point it seems like it was inevitable. After waiting maybe fifteen or twenty minutes a nice Serbian lady who owns rental properties in both Croatia and Montenegro picked us up and very kindly dropped us at the bus station in Herceg Novi.
Herceg Novi, spilling down a hillside at the mouth of the Bay of Kotor, is often described as "Little Dubrovnik". I'd say that this is a pretty optimistic view. It's nice enough, but for grandiosity and all around impressiveness it doesn't have a patch on the bigger city back on the other side of the border. Which is not to say (at all) that we didn't enjoy it. Indeed, as a place to stay instead of visit for a few hours, I'd say HN beats Dubrovnik hands down.
We went to the tourism information office and they set us up with a room to rent in a private home for the night. Our host, a sixty-odd year old Montenegrin lady spoke only a few words of mixed English and French, but was a very kind and hospitable. She made us delicious Turkish coffee with chocolate biscuits once she'd showed us our room and made sure we were comfortable.
Herceg Novi has a pretty 18th century old town with several interconnected squares and churches. And on the outskirts it has a really lovely orthodox monastery, which, if you've climbed up high enough to visit it, also affords nice views of the outer section of the bay.
Over its history Herceg Novi was contested by, amongst others, the Ottomans, the Venetians and the Hapsburgs. For this reason it's got (the remains of) city walls and two major fortifications at the top and bottom of the city (everyone told us with a bit of pride about how many stairs there were in their city, which we happily told them felt homey to us). But the best of the forts (and the one with no admission fees, interpretation, lists of rules or guardrails) was the Spanish Fort still higher up. We climbed to the tops of the walls for the very best views of the bay. And on our way out Sarah was mean to tethered goat, throwing fruit skins in its direction just out of reach. (Sarah wishes to say in her defence that she was trying to throw it softly and gently rather than just hurling it at the goat and, after throwing it a bit too softly, it landed in a patch of thistles so she couldn't collect it and throw it a bit nearer).
For all its nice sights, most people came to Herceg Novi for the watered. All along the few kilometres of shore at the bottom of the hill were restaurants and hotels and public beaches filled with private lounge and umbrella rental facilities. It was a bit odd to be sharing a place with lots of a wholly different type of tourists, i.e. Serbian and Russian couples and families on their week-long beach holidays. We went swimming right along with them in beautifully clear, warm water.
When it came time to leave Herceg Novi we took the municipal bus up the coast of Kotor Bay to its narrowest point. The Bay, which some call (incorrectly, from a geological perspective) southern Europe's only fjord (not incorrectly because there are other fjords in southern Europe, but because it is, like Marlborough in NZ, a Sound or Ria, not a fjord) extends 28km from its entrance to the furthest point inland. (Wow. That was a pretty meandering sentence, even for me.)
Anyhow, we took the free (for foot passengers) ferry across and caught a bus further into the bay. We took the long way 'round 'cause I suspected the views would be prettier, and were they!? The mountains at the edges just kept getting higher and higher and steeper. I think some of the photos I took on that trip may be the nicest I've ever taken out a bus window.
The bay and mountains are pretty spectacular. Then you get to the town of Kotor itself and see the red tiled roofs, the city walls, and the fortifications that climb above the town, up mountainsides so high that it seems like building them must surely have been pointless.
Arguably at least, this could be the Little Dubrovnik for those in search of one. We stayed at a lovely little hostel right in the centre of the roughly 500m x 500m old town. Each night the hostel offered a couple glasses of free rakia (plum Brandy) to guests, which made it one of the most sociable ones I've been to in the post-smart phone era. Even if people didn't want to drink the Rakia (and it is, I'll admit, pretty harsh stuff) many of them came along simply because most of the other people in the hostel were. We spent our nights there talking, singing along to musician-guests playing (and enjoying the rakia, of course).
Like Dubrovnik, Kotor plays host to cruise ships. But it's even smaller, so you really feel it when one is in town. We spent one day in town without a ship in port and one day with. I know which one I preferred! On the ship day we spent a decent chunk of the day a couple of kilometers up the road on the far side of the bay swimming.
On the non-ship day we wandered around taking photos of the gorgeous old buildings and alleys, and hanging out in the squares with the kitties. Kotor is famous for its cats, which are mostly pretty well fed and looked after by the town's residents. There was one tiny little kitten, however, who was having a very hard time of it. The poor thing looked to be almost entirely blind and friendless. We spent a good couple of hours trying to give it cat food, then a saucer of milk, but it just didn't seem to want to eat. Eventually the cat that seemed to be its mom came back, drank the milk and paid it a bit of attention, grooming it a bit, but she wouldn't let it suckle her. Still that was a positive sign. I'm just going to continue telling myself that the kitten is probably getting along okay now.
One thing we didn't do during our time in Kotor was the most obvious (and maybe most popular) thing to do in town: take the steep, twisting, turning, cobbles and stairs up the hillside behind town. But this is because we were planning to head that way on our final morning. Indeed, it was how I planned to leave Kotor. So we'll continue with that in the next entry.
